Privacy & Governance

Protect Your Privacy with California's DROP Tool

Are you a California resident? Then we've got exciting news for you: there's a tool just for you that lets you take a single, rela…

An Explosion of Surveillance Towers is Coming to U.S. Borders, Costing Over $1 Billion

A new report from the Government Accounting Office reveals that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to nearly triple t…

On Flock License Plate Tracking Cameras

A recent story of a writer who was mistakenly identified, tracked, and arrested using data from Flock cameras has gone viral. The…

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Washing Up on Cape Cod Beach

Lots of articles about this. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I have…

Victory! Flock Ends Rollout of Audio “Distress Detection” of Human Voices

Reversing course, Flock Safety—the surveillance technology vendor most known for its extensive network of automated license plate…

Your Vision. Your Legacy. Your Future.

This month, we celebrate 36 years of EFF and a mission that is bigger than any one of us. Thanks to EFF, communities around the wo…

How the Watch Dogs Video Game Series Mirrored and Predicted Real-World Digital Rights Issues

When Ubisoft's Watch Dogs 2 was released in 2016, it was a headtrip for those of us working on digital-rights issues in the Bay Ar…

Details of Alan Turing’s Voice Encryption System

Really interesting piece of cryptographic history: In November 2023, a large cache of his wartime papers—nicknamed the “Bayley pap…

“Stealth crawlers” are not a threat to the open web. Bills targeting them would be.

There’s a new boogeyman in the battles over AI: so-called “stealth crawlers.” We’ll admit it—the term “stealth crawlers” sound qui…

Protecting Privacy in an AI Era

Daniel Solove argues in the Wall Street Journal (alternate link) that giving people control of their personal data is not an effec…

EFF and ARTICLE 19 Submission to the European Commission on the DSA Trusted Flagger Guidelines

EFF and ARTICLE 19 have submitted joint comments to the European Commission on draft guidelines for the Digital Services Act’s tru…

California Steps Back From Dangerous Expansion of its Age-Gating Law

The California legislature has stepped back from a plan that would have expanded its age-gating law, removing language that could…

Most Smart Watches, Rings, and Bands Lack Basic Transparency Reports and Key Privacy Features

Oura Rings, Garmin GPS fitness watches, Apple Watches, Whoop bands—every year, more and more tech devices are promising to monitor…

🚫 Don't Let Congress Age-Gate the Internet | EFFector 38.13

The effort to age gate the internet is back in Washington—and now it has a new name. Recently passed by the House of Representativ…

A Video Screen That Is Also a Camera

Amazing: Researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland, however, managed to create a new type of pixel that can simultaneously do bot…

European Court: Apple Can Not Shirk Off its Interoperability Requirements

One of the best bulwarks against monopoly is interoperability—that is making a new product or service work with an existing produc…

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak: I’m speaking (virtually) at the Policy-Relevant Privacy Research…

Don’t Repeat NY’s 3D Printing Blunder

This year the state of New York had the dubious honor of being the first to pass a controversial provision to mandate all 3D print…

OAuth Client ID Spoofing Lets Attackers Validate Stolen Microsoft Entra Credentials

Vulnerability in FIFA’s Network

FIFA’s network was vulnerable to anyone with even minimal access.

Sony Nerfs Videogame Ownership

Legal intern Suzanne Castillo co-authored this post. Playstation’s decision to kill physical game discs is the latest attack on ou…

Hackers find a new trick to collect Microsoft Entra user data without raising red flags

AI Data Centers and the Concentration of Wealth

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Guardian. Opposition to AI data centers has emerged…

Friday Squid Blogging: “Squidbleed” Vulnerability

In a rare combined cybersecurity/squid post, a twenty-nine-year-old squid proxy bug can leak HTTP requests. As usual, you can also…

Building Our Future Together

In my first weeks as Executive Director of EFF, I’ve been reminded every day how consequential this moment is in determining what…

Automated Moderation Is Here to Stay—Accountability Must Keep Pace

This post is part 2 in a series about automated content moderation. Read the first post here. When whistleblower Frances Haugen le…

AI Surveillance and Social Progress

In the near future, AI-powered surveillance systems will be able to track everything we do in public, and much of what we do in pr…

The House Passed The KIDS Act—The Senate Should Reject It

Last week, the House voted on the KIDS Act, a disjointed package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and…

European Commission Chooses to Keep EU Users Locked Up Behind Big Tech’s Gates

Users are always seeking more control over their social networking experience to make it better, whether to improve privacy or enh…

The Language of AI Could Change How Humans Speak

Last week, national security agencies from the Five Eyes—that’s the rich, English-language-speaking countries club—jointly release…